Monthly Technology Updates

APRIL 1999

1. Year 2000 - Russian Military

Over the last few months officials in the United States defense community have become increasingly concerned about the potential for a military mishap because Russia is not prepared for the year 2000. Vladimir Dvorkin, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry department in charge of missile-warning systems, has stated that early-warning systems may issue false alarms when the year changes from 1999 to 2000. However, the control systems for launching nuclear missiles are not date-sensitive. The Russian military is very far behind in its year 2000 remediation efforts. It has only about $4 million to tackle the problem. Dvorkin estimates that he needs $3 billion to fix all critical systems and has appealed to NATO for the money.

To avoid mistakes that false alarms may create, the U.S. and Russian militaries will establish a joint early-warning station. Russian and U.S. military personnel will sit side by side in the weeks leading up to and just after New Year's Day 2000.

For more information, click on these links:

2. PC Tips - Easter Eggs

This month's tip will take you on an Easter Egg hunt right in your computer. Sometimes programmers leave secret code in their products. When the code is activated through a series of keystrokes or mouse clicks, it usually produces a trivial display such as interesting graphic or the programmer's name. These secret additions are known as Easter Eggs. Here are two to try:

Windows 95 Credits

This Easter Egg will display the names of the people who worked on Windows 95.

1. Right Click on the Desktop.

2. Select New... then Folder.

3. Name the folder "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for".

4. Right Click on the folder and rename it to "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure".

5. Right Click on the folder and rename it again to "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!"

6. Open the folder to display the credits

Microsoft Excel 97 Credits, Flight Simulator

This Easter Egg will turn your computer into a flight simulator. You can see the credits by flying to the correct mountain.

1. Start Excel

2. On a new Worksheet, Press F5

3. Type X97:L97 and press the enter key

4. Press the tab key

5. Hold Ctrl-Shift

6. Click on the Chart Wizard toolbar button

7. Use mouse to fly (Right button = forward, Left button = backward)

For more Easter Eggs, click on these links:

3. Go to the Mall Without Leaving Home

Many shoppers head for the mall for its variety of stores. Now you can get the same variety and never leave home, by shopping at an Internet mall (also called virtual mall or Web mall). Internet malls range in their scope and purpose. Some, like iMall and ShopNow, provide an infrastructure for retailers who want an Internet presence and have a global scope. Others merely provide a listing service for regional stores.

The larger Internet malls offer a variety of products and services to the merchants who "reside" on their site. They typically provides a means of processing credit card orders and accepting them in a secure format. They may also develop Web sites and online catalogs for their merchants.

Internet malls make money by charging merchants for services and selling advertising on their site. Setting up an online storefront in an Internet mall can range from free to several thousand dollars. Some Internet malls have software that allows a merchant to set up a free storefront and pay the mall a fee only for transactions. Getting a listing in an Internet mall can cost as little as $19.95 per year (at ShopNow). For more information, click on these links:

4. Political Spam

On February 1, 1999, a politician from New Jersey brought political campaigns into the information age by sending unsolicited E-mail to thousands of potential voters. The politician, Murray Sabrin, is a Republican who would like to replace retiring Democrat Frank Lautenberg. Unsolicited mass E-mailing is called spam.

The mass E-mail invited recipients to visit the candidate's Web site. Many of the E-mail recipients responded with complaints, both on the candidate's message forum and in public newsgroups. The group news.admin.net-abuse.email has over one thousand messages on this topic.

When the complaints started coming into Sabrin's headquarters, he issued an apology, but the E-mails kept coming and so did the complaints. In turn, the people who sent in these complaints received responses indicating that the Sabrin campaign was ready to take legal action against them. The Sabrin E-mails originated from an account with Erols Internet, which has a very strict anti-spam policy. Erols quickly discontinued the account.

It now seems that the account was owned by a Sabrin campaign volunteer, who has been fired. Sabrin has posted a public apology to his Web site. However, the controversy is still a hot topic with newgroups.

For more information about this issue, click on these links:

5. The Time Machine in Your Computer

Did you ever wish you could go back in time, back to before you made a mistake that crashed your computer? Although you can't go back in time, your computer can, with a new program called GoBack.

GoBack, produced by Wild File, Inc., operates in conjunction with Windows 95 or 98 to track changes to a system's hard disk. When a problem occurs, the user can view the contents of the hard disk at various points in time (usually up to about one week). The user can then restore the hard disk to a point before the problem occurred. GoBack can even restore a hard disk on a system that won't boot up.

GoBack uses about 10 percent of a system's total hard disk space. The more disk space used, the further back in time a system can travel. The software also requires at least 16 megabytes of RAM and costs about $65.

For more information, click on these links:

6. A "Walkman" Without Disks or Tapes - Blame it on Rio

Now you can download music off the Internet and play it on a portable, "Walkman-like" device. Diamond's Rio PMP300 uses the MP3 audio-compression scheme (see article in last month's technology updates) to store up to an hour of near CD-quality music in its 32 megabytes (MB) of memory. The basic Rio player costs about $200. Additional memory modules are available for about $50 for each 16 megabytes. Extra memory can be useful for listening to MP3-formatted audio books.

The Rio connects to a PC via a parallel port cable. After MP3 files are downloaded from the Internet they can be easily transferred to the Rio. It typically takes less than six minutes to fill the base 32 MB of memory. The Rio operates on a single AA battery that lasts approximately 12 hours.

For more information about the Rio or to download music, click on these links:

7. Get Your Internet Services For Free

Sure you could pay a lot of money to have someone host your Web site or provide E-mail service. But did you know you can also get these services for free? GeoCities is one of the largest free providers of Internet services. Over 3 million people have used GeoCities to host their personal home page. Personal home pages reside in one of GeoCities 41 online communities. Each community has a name and specific theme, such as "Area 51" for science fiction fans and "Capitol Hill" for those interested in politics.

GeoCities makes money by popping up a small advertisement whenever a member's page is accessed. It also makes money by providing expanded services for personal Web sites and by hosting commercial Web sites.

GeoCities will also provide free E-mail accounts for its members. This is a service that has gained in popularity lately, and many of the Web portals, like Yahoo! and Excite, also offer free E-mail services. At the end of January 1999 Yahoo! agreed to purchase Geocities for approximately $4.5 billion in stock.

For more free Internet services, click on these links:

8. Will Linux Wash Microsoft's Windows?

Your next operating system might be free, and it might not be made by Microsoft. The past year has seen a tremendous growth in the popularity of the Linux (pronounced lie-nucks) operating system. Linux is a free version of the Unix operating system, which has been around for over 25 years. Linux was named after its creator, Linus Torvalds. Torvalds was a 25-year-old college student at the University of Helsinki when he began to create Linux in 1991.

Since the source code for Linux is freely available on the Internet, many programmers have written their own improvements and utility programs that are also available for free. The concept of making the source code freely available is called "open source."

Because it contains the features of Unix and can run Unix software, Linux has become more popular as a platform for Web sites and corporate intranets. Many major database vendors, including Oracle, Sybase, and Informix, recently announced they would produce Linux versions of their key products.

Over the past few months Linux has become increasingly popular on desktop computers. At a recent conference Torvalds called for Linux supporters to "scale down" the operating system for desktops, notebooks, and even handheld PCs. A new open source program, called Twine, should help. It allows developers of Windows-based software to quickly port their applications to Linux. While Linux is not now a major threat to Windows, some experts are predicting that it may become one in the future.

For more information, click on these links (Note: there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites devoted to Linux. Try your favorite search engine for more information):

9. Global System For Mobile Telecommunications

The 1980s saw a rapid growth in the cellular phone industry. But in Europe, many cellular systems were limited to operations within national borders. This caused problems for phone users who traveled throughout Europe. Therefore, in 1990 the European Telecommunication Standards Institute implemented a new, Europe-wide standard, called the Global System for Mobile Telecommunications (GSM).

Unlike the early cellular phone systems, which use an analog signal, GSM is all digital. This gives GSM phones the ability to handle data transmission, as well as standard voice telephony. By connecting a GSM phone to a laptop computer, users can access the Internet, send and receive E-mail, or log onto a corporate network. GSM phones also work in conjunction with the Short Messaging Service (SMS) to send or receive alphanumeric pages.

Today the GSM standard is in use on over 300 wireless networks in over 100 countries. Through a series of roaming agreements there is a good chance that a GSM phone will work just about anywhere a user might visit (click here to see a list of GSM roaming agreements).

For more information, click on these links:

10. No New International Standard For Mobile Phones

On March 19, 1999, a committee of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) failed to recommend a single, worldwide standard for wireless communications. The problem the ITU faces is that three powerful wireless companies are supporting three different standards for the next generation of wireless technologies. This next generation, called the third generation, or 3G, will allow high-speed Internet connections and other advanced communications services. It will also allow mobile phones to operate across carrier networks.

Currently, wireless phone systems work on one of three major standards. In the United States most wireless carriers use either the code division multiple access (CDMA) or time division multiple access (TDMA) standards. Both standards increase the amount of data that can be carried on a signal. Qualcomm supports CDMA2000 (an advanced CDMA standard) as the third generation standard, while AT&T supports TDMA. In Europe and some parts of the U.S. the dominant standard is Global System for Mobile Telecommunications (GSM; see the article in this month's technology updates). The Swedish company Ericson has proposed a variation of CDMA, called Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA), as the upgrade path to GSM.

By endorsing all three of the proposed standards, the ITU is essentially forcing the mobile phone companies to develop phones that can operate on all three systems.

For more information, click on these links:

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